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THS COXXMOM- Z.OT. 



SERMON 




DEATH AND CHARACTER 



WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE U. S. 



PREACHED AT JAMAICA PLAIN, 



SUNDAY, APRIL IS, 1841. 



BY GEORGE WHITNEY, 

Junior Minister of the Congregational Churcb. 



BUTTS, PRINTER, SCHOOL STREET, BOSTON. 



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THE COSXMOZ? I.OT. 



SERMON 



DEATH AND CHARACTER 



WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE U. S. 

PREACHED AT JAMAICA PLAIN, 

SUNDAY, APRIL ]8, 1841. . . , . 



• BY GEORGE WHITNEY, 

Junior Minister of the Congregational Church. 



BUTTS, PRINTER, SCHOOL STREET. BOSTON. 



M DCCCXLI. 



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William Henry Harrison was born at Berkley, in Charles City- 
County, Virginia, on the 9th of February, 1773, and educated at Hampden 
Sidney College. He began the study of medicine, but left it, and entered 
the army at the age of eighteen. In 1797 he became Secretary of the 
North-west Territory. In 1799 he went Delegate to Congress from the 
same Territory. In 1800 he was appointed Governor of the Territory of 
Indiana, and made Superintendent of Indian Affiiirs in the North-west. In 
1816 he was chosen Representative to Congress from Ohio, and in 1824, Sen- 
ator. In 1828 he was appointed Minister to Colombia. In 1840 he was 
chosen President of the United States, was inaugurated 4th of March, 1841, 
and died the 4th of April succeeding, aged 68 years. 



SERMON. 



NUMBERS XVI, 29. 
"these men die the common death of all men." 

Since last 1 addressed you, my friends, from this 
place of our solemnities, an unusual bereavement 
has passed over our land. Disease and death have 
been unitedly busy, and rapidly successful in closing 
the earthly career of one, on whom the world had 
nothing higher among its honors to bestow. He, 
whom this great people, in numbers before unpre- 
cedented in our history, had chosen to stand at the 
head of its affairs, has suddenly bowed, as in the 
words of the text, to the common lot, and passed 
where sovereign and subject lie down together — 
their empty distinctions no longer known. He had 
been summoned to fill an exalted station, and in- 
vested with the forms of earthly power, but they all 
aflforded no immunity against the universal decree. 
He has died the common death of all men. He 
has fallen, too, in the morning of his work, while as 



yet tlie harness had hardly all been girded on. The 
sanguine hopes of friends, and the waiting expecta- 
tions of all, have been blasted in an hour. A deep 
solemnity and an honorable sympathy pervade all 
classes and parties throughout our wide spread bor- 
ders. There is a melancholy and overwhelming 
sense of a great and common loss. 

As becomes a Christian patriot, I would turn this 
afflictive providence to some edifying account. I 
should degrade myself in my own eyes if I could be 
persuaded to speak of him any the sooner or the 
more tardily because of this party or that. He was 
of the noble party of good men, and that is enough 
for me. I have no anxiety either to bespeak the 
patient audience of any one. I am sure of all I 
can desire from every right mind and every gene- 
rous heart. It is an hour when honest differences 
lose all the prominency they may once have pos- 
sessed, in a theme of deeper import — as fading 
stars die out before the opening day. There is a 
power, too, in the grave, which buries up, for the 
most part, all antipathies, and leads us to a calmer 
justice towards those whose memories it is soothing 
to us to guard. Nay, more, even our well-grounded 
preferences shrink away and give place to tender 
and charitable emotions, when death has arrested 
one in his race, and summoned a kindred spirit to 
the presence of his God. 



But, more than this, there were circumstances 
which tended to make the loss we are deploring 
more than usually affecting. It is an unwonted 
spectacle to see youthful faces saddened, and tears 
in the eyes of grown men, at the departure of any 
public servant. It has not been easy for us to divest 
the mind of the impression that a void has been 
made in the household circle. This, I think, has 
been, to an extraordinary degree, the general senti- 
ment. Men have felt as if one had been suddenly 
smitten down, with whom they have been long 
famihar — a friend and not a stranger — an ac- 
quaintance and not a public functionary. This has 
been owing, in part, to the character of the man, as 
far as it was known, having those traits pre-eminent 
which bind human sympathies with them ; partly, 
also, and to a much wider extent, I suppose, to that 
universal enthusiasm which manifested itself in an 
endless variety of forms, making his name famihar 
to us like a household word, and which so recently 
bore him up from his comparative poverty and re- 
tirement to the high station he filled, in the striking 
language of one who had himself been seated there, 
as upon the wings of a " whirlwind." 

Furthermore, the event before us has presented 
another feature already alluded to, always touching 
to the heart and full of solemn admonition to every 



thoughtful mind. Only one short month had passed, 
the waxing and waning of a single moon, from the 
day of his elevation to the day of his death. Sud- 
den and melancholy was the transition from the 
hour, when myriads were doing him glad homage, 
to the feeble one, appointed to us all, when none 
could be found strong enough to afford him help. 
The robes of office and the winding sheet seemed 
to have been brought in together. The public con- 
gratulations of the ceremonial hall had hardly sub- 
sided to give repose to the chamber of death. The 
sounds of rejoicing seemed still to be lingering round 
its doors, while flesh and heart were failing. The 
chariot of state and the funeral car with its nodding 
plumes, — we might almost fancy them one behind the 
other. Between triumphant joy and solemn wo, 
there was scarcely an intermediate scene. It was 
as when the hopeful are summoned to the bridal, 
and the burial is substituted in its place. It would 
be vain to attempt to portray the bereaved feelings 
of those before whom it immediately passed. But 
the emotions the event has excited have in a meas- 
ure pervaded the community. The sudden transi- 
tion has added to the task of sympathizing with the 
general feehng, and, at the same time, avoiding the 
danger of exaggeration. If I may but succeed in 
some humble approach to this difficult line by a few 



brief touches of his character, as to me it has 
appeared, with such reflections as may arise upon 
them, it will be all that I ought to hope, and more 
than 1 can reasonably expect to accomplish in the 
present discourse. 1 shall feel, at least, that mine 
has been well meant among worthier eulogies. 

It is a cheering reflection that, for vastly the larger 
portion even of what may be termed the important 
stations of society, great talents or genius, or a ca- 
pacious intellect are, as leading objects, neither 
necessary nor desirable. There is that which is 
better than them all. Strikingly in keeping with 
this are the distributions of divine Providence. 
Take a large city, and how few, comparatively, are 
they, who stand out from the rest as great men in 
the popular acceptation of the term. Moreover, 
wherever those gifts are bestowed, which ensure re- 
markable preeminence, they are not unfrequently 
found in most unfortunate contrast with some great 
deficiency, as in Lord Bacon, for example, gigantic 
in intellect, but dwarfish in conscience. Among 
many others, there is, in the world, this mistaken 
notion of what constitutes true greatness. It is as- 
sociated indispensably with power surprisingly effi- 
cient, and, hke a sudden thunderbolt, startling ; sup- 
posed capable also of accomplishing astonishing re- 
sults in every department, and on all occasions. If 



8 



I am right in the estimate I have formed of his char- 
acter, he whose loss the country now deplores, was 
not a great man in any of the popular acceptations 
of the term, more especially in this. His powers 
were not such as startle and impress, but rather 
those more solid qualities that wear well. His char- 
acter is to be ranked in that class, of which the Fa- 
ther of our country was the great model among our- 
selves, if not among all men that ever hved. It 
was most remarkable for its even balance and for 
the rightful supremacy of all the higher elements : — 
a kind of greatness to which the popular voice is 
slowest to do justice. Its great beauty was its har- 
mony. He had httle about him, if indeed, he was 
not wholly destitute of anything, prominent or dis- 
jointed. There was no preponderance of love of 
power ; no greedy covetousness of gain ; no empty 
ambition for a name. We find him little varying in 
every station — the same man in them all ; equally 
at home where his somewhat varied fortunes cast 
him, — in battles, where, I think, neither his taste 
nor his nature led him to act ; among the wild tribes 
of the wilderness who regarded him as a friend ; in 
the new kingdoms of the south ; in the councils of 
the nation, or in the quiet retreats of domestic hfe, 
and the unpretending, useful services, from which 
he was called to be a ruler. 



He was not peculiarly endowed with the philo- 
sophic element. Nevertheless, though he might not 
be consulted as a philosopher, he would be the first 
to be confided in for his discretion. He had that 
clear good sense which oftentimes sees more surely 
even than the highest philosophy. Though he might 
not electrify and charm us with that brilliancy of 
mind, the gift of some, he would seldom lead us to 
lament that he had erred in judgment, and never 
that he had been betrayed by passion. Multitudes 
might pass him by, fascinated by no glittering at- 
tractions, but they, who lingered long enough to see 
his wordi, would feel reluctant to depart. Little 
occasion would he ever furnish an enemy, if any 
such he had, for accusation against him ; certainly 
little in imprudence or folly, and still less in any 
moral delinquency. Is not this the better kind of 
greatness ? So far as character alone is concerned, 
is it not that which best fills and honors every public 
station ? 

This man, whom the people had set over them, 
remarkable as he was, in the general view of his 
character for an even and well balanced one, had 
nevertheless, two or three leading points among the 
higher qualities, which we may cursorily notice. 
As striking as any, perhaps, was his sense of justice. 
I should be slow to ascribe to him, as a characteris- 
2 



10 



tic trait, either warmth of character, or ardor of 
temperament. But the sight of a wrong practised 
either upon others or himself, and much more any 
inducement to perpetrate such an act, or the sus- 
picion of having committed it, would be likely some- 
times to be mistaken for both. He was not the one 
to stand calm and unmoved in such emergencies. 
That, which had so firm a seat within, would show 
itself in the kindling eye and the warm glow of in- 
dignation. On ordinary occasions its natural ex- 
pression would be seen in the absence of hasty de- 
cisions, and a calm and patient manner. It would 
then beget reliance. We have good assurance that 
this w^as so. I understand it to have been the first 
impression with which, upon a personal interview, 
a stranger was sure to be inspired. You would feel 
yourself in the presence of one from whom no 
wrong would be feared or suspected. This influ- 
ence can never be assumed. It must be in the 
man. It can never be put on. We could no more 
have been made to feel the same security in the pres- 
ence of Nero or Napoleon, by any purpose of theirs, 
than by any efforts of our own we could have trans- 
formed them into angels of light. I repeat it, it must 
be in the man. It is enough to know that this influ- 
ence was shed around him, to be assured that the ele- 
ment existed in him of whom we are speaking. It 



11 



created confidence. It bound others to him. It 
made him the unsulHed man he was. It set him above 
reproach. It raised his integrity beyond suspicion. 
All fair men among his opponents have acknovvl- 
edsed that he was an honest man. "With him a trust 
would be safe as far as he could know how to fulfil 
it. He could look with no complacency upon any 
wrong. The highest would not escape censure 
were it deserved, and the meanest would lose no 
right it was his to claim. I err greatly if this was 
not a strong feature in the character of him whom 
we lament ; — and a fitting trait it was for one whom 
the people had led up so high. 

Close by this, and well associated with it, was a 
hearty good will for his fellow-men. He stood with- 
in the circle of human sympathies. His benevo- 
lence was active and influential. What is recorded 
of his public acts and his spoken words, with all 
that has escaped of the gentleness and kindness of 
his private life, leave us no room to doubt this. 
Moreover, it seems to have been a part of himself. 
It was the spontaneous acting out of his nature — 
whether in power or out of it, commanding others 
or serving them, the persuasion that he was one of 
his race. He never parted with the feeling that he 
was a man. With many this is only a conviction or 
a recollection. With him, if I interpret him right, 



12 



it was diflcrent. He was benevolent almost from 
necessity : it was his pleasure and natural life. He 
could not be otherwise but by doing violence to 
himself. Nothing humble or erring could exclude 
one from a share in his benevolent regards. It 
tinged his whole character, and, 1 may add, gave 
beauty to the whole. It took off the coldness and 
severity which, without this, sometimes encircle the 
man of incorruptible integrity, like a freezing at- 
mosphere, and chill us as we would draw nigh. It 
gave that suavity and tenderness to his character. 
Oh ! how much missed in the home that is now des- 
olate, the suavity and tenderness which we are told 
was such a charm. It blunted the edge of a com- 
mand and turned it into a persuasion. It spoke 
welcome and fellowship in the beaming eye, and 
the light of the face in anticipation of the tongue. 
And it was an affecting testimony to the trait which 
had been manifested before them, but a few days 
before, that, on the morning before his death, they 
gathered up in the market-place, with swimming 
eyes and eager inquiries, sorrowing lest they should 
see his face no more. 

There is yet one other point, to which it would 
be wrong in us not to advert — a trait, if not before 
all, certainly behind none. The want of enthusiasm 
and the absence of ardor, might by some, be mis- 



13 



construed here, as in other parts of his character, 
and be thought to preclude the possibility of deep 
rehgious feehng. But if we may judge from his 
hfe it was not so. He was a devout man. He 
walked with God. He adorned his hfe with the 
beauty of hohness. He who ponders his character, 
as displayed through eventful and trying scenes, will 
not find that he was the one to dissemble in anything. 
What he seemed, he was. He put on nothing for 
effect. And although we should make but little 
account of the fact, for the spirit is the essential, 
and not the form, yet when it is related of him that 
he worshiped his Maker on his knees, we under- 
stand it to be the natural expression of the deep 
sentiment of his heart — the natural posture which 
his soul required for the reverential homage of his 
Maker. It is likewise a striking incident related 
among the pecuharly affecting circumstances attend- 
ing his public obsequies, that the funeral service, 
over his lifeless remains, was in part read from a 
copy of the Holy Scriptures he had purchased as his 
guide and oracle, when he first entered his new and 
responsible sphere of action. Both may seem a 
curious coincidence ; on the latter day only I would 
remark. In itself, indeed, it may to some appear 
but a simple and natural act. But it speaks vol- 
umes for the deep reverence with which that best of 



14 



books had been regarded. It discloses to the ac- 
curate observer, as the thin smoke points the wind, 
when no breath seems stirring, in what direction his 
tendencies moved him. 

In analyzing his character, as portrayed to us by 
his conduct in the stations he had filled, together 
with what is left to us in public documents and 
speeches, and the testimony of those who had en- 
joyed his society, these seem to me to have been 
the leading traits in the character of our departed 
chief. If in intellect he was not startling or daz- 
zling, he certainly was far more than ordinarily en- 
dowed. If not great in the world's estimate of 
greatness, that must undeniably be conceded to him, 
which results from powers well balanced and con- 
trolled. In this he was great. In every just sense 
he was good. Superior elements ever took the 
lead in his character. His long and successful ser- 
vices among the Indian tribes were enough alone to 
confirm this. No human being could deal with 
those most savage and selfish forms of humanity 
through such protracted periods, and to such happy 
issues — every influence perpetually exerted to draw 
out all that was selfish in himself — but by kindness, 
and justice, and other elevating influences. He 
illustrated beautifully the power of moral over brute 
force. In this respect he resembled Penn, of whom 



15 



it is recorded that he made a treaty with those wild 
sons of the wilderness which lasted seventy years — 
" the only one," says Voltaire, " ever concluded be- 
tween savages and christians, that was not ratified 
by an oath, the only one that never was broken." 

His independence was manly and straight-for- 
ward ; tempered meanwhile with that same suavity, 
which threw a rosy coloring round all he did and 
said. With no fear for the mightiest, he could not 
wound or wrong the meanest. The fortunes of his 
life had thrown him into the camp and on the bat- 
tle-field. But he was not made for a warrior, as 
warriors usually have been ; and I think all the 
better of him that he was not. He had not enough 
of the contentious and destructive spirit for that. 
Nevertheless, his high moral sentiments led him 
always to act bravely and well, however repugnant 
the task might be to his nature or taste. Of one 
thing I am sure ; he would have made a poor mili- 
tary man if called to fight a batde in an unjust 
cause. It has been said as a marked feature in the 
character of him who was " first in war " as in 
peace, that his retreats were as remarkable as his 
successful engagements ; showing the element of 
mercy ever vigilant to protect his soldiers. It was 
the predominance of the same trait, which must 
have robbed the batde-field of every charm in the 



16 



eyes of him who followed him in his last elevated 
station. Yet this very peculiarity only rendered 
him the more fit to fill it well. He had been made 
to shine best in the councils of State and the civi- 
lian's chair. 

As to his intercourse with others, he could little 
sympathise with the remark of the wily Talleyrand, 
that " God seemed to have given us the power not 
to express but to conceal our thoughts." His natu- 
ral frankness and openness, both of which were 
conspicuous, might possibly have been deemed in- 
consistent with the character of an eminent and 
successful statesman. I know not but as the in- 
trigues of courts and their artful policy may, in the 
past history of the world, have been managed, it 
might have been so. But I have yet to learn that 
such crystal traits as these can be any impediment 
towards forming a good and virtuous one. Let us 
believe, rather, that if we are to consider political 
hfe as only capable of being pursued successfully by 
artifice, stratagem and concealment, we have not 
yet discovered its rightful paths ; and that we have 
no claim as yet to be enrolled as the worthy ser- 
vants of men, till we have first become the true- 
hearted and faithful servants of God. 

To the removal of such a character — let me 
hope I may not have departed from the truth of it — 



17 



it is not easy at any time to be indifferent. Occur- 
ring as it has, it has seemed to render more mourn- 
ful, if not to magnify the loss. Nevertheless, let us 
beware lest we look at the divine appointments only 
through our own sorrows. " It is related as a singu- 
lar fehcity," — I borrow from another the beautiful 
description of a record of history — " it is related as 
a singular felicity of the great philosopher Plato, 
that he died at a good old age, at a banquet, sur- 
rounded with flowers and perfumes, amidst festal 
songs, on his birth-day." Happy, I may add, in the 
spirit of the old Latin maxim, not more in the glory 
of his life than in the period of his death. I know 
not but that in the departure of him, on whom the 
nation's thoughts have been fixed, the same might 
be repeated with equal force. I could entertain no 
anxious forebodings for my country, so far as char- 
acter is concerned, under such direction. 1 would 
express no fears, which we might not feel for any 
human strength. But at the best, it might be hap- 
piest for himself, as we know it was wisest, that he 
was permitted to depart before promises could even 
be in danger of being broken, or trials feebly borne 
could detract from the lustre of his renown. Could 
we see all its issues, we might behold him de- 
parting in a chariot of light ; dropping, too, like 
him of old, as he ascended, a mantle, rich in bless- 
3 



11 



ings, on those who should come after him, and on 
the country of his fondest prayers. Could our hearts, 
too, but be opened to every sanctifying influence, 
how much larger service than his life might we see 
his death conferring ! The solemn voice of God, 
whose protecting care was ever over our fathers, and 
those whom he raised up for their defence, has 
spoken with awakening tones in the deaths, on the 
jubilee day of the nation, of three of those who had 
been successively chosen to preside over this people. 
Still another, whom the people had honored, has 
suddenly closed his eyes almost at the very hour 
when he had assumed the robe. Is there no lan- 
guage of warning in these striking uccurrences, no 
words of wisdom speaking from his death ? Are 
there no monitions of the emptiness of human ele- 
vation, of the common lot that awaits us all ? Is 
there no encouragement to cultivate the spirit and 
life, which he, whom wc mourn, has left us as his 
brightest legacy ? 

Yes, brethren, all these monitions are saving. 
All the memory of the man is good. His life was 
an honor to his country and humanity. He lived 
like a Christian patriot and he died hke one, — the 
best good of his country at his heart in its last 
throbbings. The nation has become a mourner, for 
it had reposed confidence in his integrity, and its 



19 



anticipations of him have been disappointed. A 
gloomy and sad reverse has passed hke a sudden 
cloud in the stately mansion, and at the Halls of the 
Capitol, and among the family circle, where, but a 
month ago, he walked as chief, and shed, on all, 
the beams of his kindly countenance. I rejoice 
that above all this, bringing with it its disappoint- 
ment and lonely bereavement, there remaineth a 
noble monument, that will endure forever. I re- 
joice in the memory of the man. Time will take 
not a gem from his crown of graces. It will grow 
brighter and brighter, age after age, the longer and 
the deeper it is pondered. I can think better of my 
country and my race, — of the one that she could 
put confidence in such worth, — of the other, that 
such an example is recorded on its page. And I 
will believe, and bless God who permits me to do it, 
that one whom half a continent has honored and now 
mourns for, one of the Lord's noblemen, a kind- 
hearted, true-hearted man, with all his soul for his 
Maker, and more than half for his race, having faith- 
fully finished his services on earth, has gone hence 
with a measure of the spirit of Heaven, — has gone 
to sit on a higher throne within the bright circles of 
glory on high. 



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